The Latest DOJ Travesty Is a Dire Warning of the Dangers Ahead

A lot has happened. Here are some of the things. This is the TPM Morning Memo.

Too cute in half

The colossally corrupt indictment from the Southern Poverty Law Center shows how powerful a politicized Justice Department can be in the hands of a rogue president — and how difficult it is, even at this late stage, for the press and public to get a clear picture of punitive prosecutions.

If the SPLC has long been an executioner of extremists and therefore a target of the right, it has not has been subjected to the kind of rhetoric against him from President Trump that would help bring the false nature of the prosecution more clearly into the public mind. So there was a lot of “let’s wait and see what they have” in yesterday’s coverage of the new federal indictment out of Alabama. Even I felt some trepidation about assuming this was another politicized bogus prosecution until we had a better handle on the allegations.

But let’s be clear: they have nothing. Period. Complete shutdown.

The indictment reads like what you would expect from a group of young conservative lawyers who consider themselves intelligent and who have an agenda to defend against an anti-white supremacy organization. It’s so cute by half. He insists that up is down.

The SPLC’s payments to informants to obtain information about the activities of extremist groups that it then shared with law enforcement were, according to this testimony, financing white supremacism. The creation of shell entities to protect informants by concealing the origin of payments is presented as a money laundering conspiracy. Making payments through normal banking channels has somehow turned banks into victims and given rise to a host of electronic frauds and false accusations.

I watched the entire press conference from Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel, and it was mind-boggling how little they had against the SPLC and how ill-prepared they were to address the more troubling questions the case raises, like what precisely was the fraud? Or what is the exact proof that decades of payments to extremist informants are not a function of surveillance but a promotion of extremism?

In one telling moment, Blanche let slip that the SLPC investigation was launched under Trump I, was abandoned under Biden, then revived under Trump II.

For context and history as well as a real unpacking of the indictment, I recommended:

• Joyce Vance, former U.S. attorney in Alabama: “At first glance, these allegations seem like an extension of the vindictive case and attacks on universities and law firms, an effort to delegitimize and marginalize an organization that opposes the administration. We will have an opportunity to study the accusations as we learn more about the government’s evidence. The government’s central theory is that the SPLC paid high-ranking white supremacists, but it appears to ignore the reason – that the use of paid informants was essential to the intelligence the Center collected on the groups of which they were members, including intelligence shared with the FBI.
• Chris Geidner, who shows how the facts presented in the indictment itself belie Blanche’s claims at the press conference, where he went well beyond the indictment to allege that the SPLC was “not dismantling these groups, but rather manufacturing the extremism it claims to oppose.”

The underlying danger goes well beyond SPLC. Not every vindictive prosecution will be as open and obvious as those against James Comey, Letitia James, John Brennan, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, etc. Even a long-standing, respected organization with a remarkable history of fighting the Ku Klux Klan and right-wing extremism that most journalists are very familiar with is easily placed under a veil of suspicion and doubt by the most disingenuous Department of Justice in our history.

Investigating Investigator Surveillance

The latest developments in the bogus “grand conspiracy” prosecution the Trump Justice Department is pursuing in South Florida, now under the auspices of new Trump loyalist Joseph diGenova:

• The New York Times reports that subpoenas sent over the weekend by a Washington grand jury in the politically motivated case against former CIA Director John Brennan were quickly quashed on Monday. The cooperating witness who has been subpoenaed will be interviewed voluntarily, which would be the most typical practice of the DOJ.
• While the mother of all vindictive lawsuits is based in Florida, the alleged perjury case against Brennan stems from a deposition he gave to Congress, so he should probably be charged in Washington. The New York Times and WaPo report that Miami U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones has been given special authority to pursue charges outside his home district, including in Washington.
• WaPo reports that Quiñones has been meeting regularly with Blanche’s office about the case for months. Blanche was in Florida on Monday and met with diGenova and the case team, then posted on X about it: